Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Maybe often we have to
train candidates for B2 or C1 levels of a foreign language. Those levels are
upper-intermediate and advanced respectively.

How can we sure we’re doing well?
We can imagine we ourselves have to pass those levels and we’ll know what to
do! And we’ll have clear ideas that we have to practice listening, speaking,
reading and writing, plus grammar and vocabulary.

What would we do to train
those language skills plus grammar and vocabulary in order to pass an exam? And
so we will be able to train our candidates for those levels.

Thus when planning
our lessons we could think: What have I to do to improve for example at
speaking or at listening? And we’ll go for it in a practical way. For me
listening and speaking are the most demanding and difficult skills to improve.
As well we can think about what we did when we had to pass B2, C1 or C2. This
latter level is the highest one in a language, and when we get a thorough C2
level, that means we are bilingual users of the foreign or second language.

The
core points for learning and acquiring a language are both practicing and
studying. Practice, practice, practice, and studying, studying, studying. And
let’s keep a lot of track of our students, so as for them to really advance and
progress!

Oh, and remember that each step forward, each word learned, each
verbal tense learned, is a step forward: a house is made by many bricks – we make
houses by laying so many small bricks! / Photo from: london-underground-notting-hill-stationpersquaremile com. That large station was
made by many many bricks!

Monday, July 17, 2017

Our students
should be educated in both freedom and responsibility. There are few rules.
Also there’s a schedule or timetable. They’re treated as persons, with freedom
and responsibility.

In that way they can grow without stridencies. In that way
they can learn and study just because they want to, helped by their teachers.
Why a schedule or timetable and a few rules? For their happiness, ultimately:
we want they should grow up in an atmosphere of calm and fortitude.

If there’s
a problem we will correct that kid aside; in other words we’ll try he should
realize about what’s wrong. With freedom and responsibility they can learn,
work and study in a nice and pleasant way: they wish to learn.

All of them feel
at home, and the school is a prolongation of home and their families: those
parents entrust their kids to us teachers: they don’t delegate their thorough
education in our hands but we help those parents and families educate their
offspring.

Students love their liberty and they learn to respect other students’
ones. Every student is respected whatever his social background is. And they
also live a thorough friendship: their talents are invested to help others. / Photo
from: mars-surface-eva-drilling NASA. The picture is a curious illustration.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Reading texts in the
target language is a nice and suitable activity, which one we have to exploit a
lot: reading makes you learn that target language.

And better if those texts
are meaningful to our students. They must be meaningful and interesting to
them. But also providing texts that seem not to be interesting for our students
can be a challenge to those people… The condition is that those texts may be
interesting per se, in themselves, and might increase our students’ culture,
because, as I said, they’re interesting per se, in themselves. And we teachers
must help our students increase their culture.

Those texts deserve an extra
effort from our students, and we’ll have to lead in those scripts, by making some
lead-in activities, like eliciting vocabulary or ideas about those texts that
are new to our students. That extra effort may mean some challenge by the
students.

We teachers might explain positive points about those scripts, so the
students may get attracted by those new topics. Even those texts may ultimately
be motivating for those people, in the end. Both fiction and non-fiction are great for reading! And as I said, reading is a language
learning booster. / Photo from: Paisaje-de-Carretera-de-Ferrocarril_Hermosos-Paisajes-Naturales. That picture might be the background of a thriller text...

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I rarely write
about environmental friendship, and it’s quite important. Well I’ve written
something before.

And we have to achieve our young students would gain some
respect and a nice attitude toward our beautiful planet. We’re educating future
citizens, even present citizens!

When we take our students to an excursion we
teachers have to set an example and teach those kids to litter garbage into
garbage containers. As well we can teach our students to admire a beautiful
landscape. By educating our students in beauty we’re helping them become more
human and more honorable. And we’ll see this improvement even at classroom
behavior. For sure.

We can also teach them how to recycle plastic, glass,
paper, oil, etc. I remember quite many years ago we had an English reader-book
about recycling, in English, which is the school subject I teach. It was pretty
interesting, and we had nice discussions about recycling.

This subject matter
can be an interdisciplinary nature to be studied among different school
subjects: science, English, social studies, history, physics, chemistry, morals
and ethics… It’s nice.

We shouldn’t forget about reducing the CO2 (carbon
dioxide) emissions. In other words we should educate our kids in a sober and
rational way of living and loving nature, animals, plants, minerals,
environments, landscapes… Of course not forgetting, in the first place, loving
human beings, from the nasciturus or unborn child to the elderly. / Photo from:
phuket-islands-thailand-wallpaper-61746

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

We second or foreign
language teachers have to speak massively to our students, okay. And sometimes
we’ve got to make an oral presentation about some issue, okay.

Something that
boosts, enhances, and fosters massive speaking is… massive reading. Also for our
students, before an oral exam in that target language, it could be useful to
read massively too. Also for improving the speaking skill massive reading
creates the soil where you can grow the plant of the language.

And reading
what? It depends on the subject or issue you’ve got to speak about, but on the
Internet you have lots of texts for learning English or any other common
foreign language. As well our students and we teachers have textbooks, novels,
articles, news, etc.

So remember, before an oral exam or an oral presentation
read rather massively: the more you read the better. Why does reading help
speaking? Because you think in the target language and also because it provides
you with language “weapons”: vocabulary, grammar patterns, idioms, ways of
saying things in that target tongue, the texture of the second or foreign
language… / Photo from: teach nice edu

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Self-motivation is
adequate for learning. Of course! Some geniuses, like Edison, Einstein and
Steve Jobs weren’t motivated and good at regular learning at school. Otherwise they
were motivated for the knowledge areas they showed they were so good...

Also we teachers
have to be careful and prone to discover the areas or skills our students are
good at.

And what can we do to help our students become motivated about the
school subject we teach? Maybe we can make them work at the area or subject we
teach and eventually they’ll become motivated, when they see they’re
progressing.

If our students are not motivated, we have to gently praise the
small achievements they make, and little by little they will become motivated
and happy at our school subject, math, science, English as a second or foreign
language, religion, sports, grammar, history…

I had a student, at private
tuition, who was poor at that school subject (English), and over time, by praising his
achievements, he eventually became better and better. I said “praising”: okay
we can do it with our students but we have to avoid flattering or adulating. Also
we can contribute to our students’ motivation by talking with them, both at
tutoring sessions and in the classroom: often when we explain to our students
what is right they adhere and stick to what is good for them. In other words,
we have to make our students think, reflect and ponder about what’s good for
them and for society.

Monday, July 10, 2017

If you’re a head teacher
or have other teachers under you and you know there’s a mess and misbehavior continually
at another teacher’s classroom, you shouldn’t interrupt and butt in his lesson
so as to pacify the students.

Why? Because he will for sure lose authority. We may
think we’re doing well and helping that teacher with problems but ultimately we’re
making him lose his authority.

We as head or experienced teachers should help
that teacher with problems but in a different way. It may be more difficult to
teach a teacher to exert his authority than learning oneself to have that
authority.

So let’s talk with him and pass on our experience to him. And let’s
remember that that teacher may be suffering from that misbehavior. Ultimately that
teacher has to learn by himself how to exert his authority, because it is
something you learn on your own.

As a friend of mine, another teacher said, the
first year of your career as a teacher you suffer a lot, the second year less,
and the third year you’re in your element or close to that.

On this blog there’s
plenty of advice about discipline and class management. So remember: don’t interrupt
someone’s lesson, although you may be feeling some nagging thought that you
should enter the classroom and carry out some course of action. / Photo from: did-tradition-playing-bagpipes-funerals-police-officers-firefighters-originate
Reference com. That parade on the pic shows a sheer discipline!

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Oh our teens and
adolescents! We have to be patient with them, also because we have gone through
that important period too!

And they’re in our hands. We have people who are
traveling through a period of their lives that is crucial for their education
and formation! We grown-ups can influence a lot on their lives and biographies.
On their lives now and in the future too.

We must love them and wish the best
to them. What we do and what we don’t do influence on them a lot and that’s for
sure. It is something to be expected that they do peculiar and even rather odd
things and they may have a behavior which is not predictable. They’re even
strange to themselves and can’t understand themselves!

But also let’s remember
that that age is one of high ideals and high compromises. They have thirst for
the genuine and authentic. Because of that they sometimes dress and behave the
way they do. Remember we have to try and understand them, and be patient. They’re
great anyway! / Photo from: YouTube. The picture is a nice illustration.

Friday, July 7, 2017

Although I'm posting further, in short, today I wanted to thank you all of you readers, because unless you read this blog it would not be possible. It's great you all are there, all the time, expecting and awaiting for my posting. I also thank the other teachers that post on TeacherLingo for sharing their ideas and all. You're great!

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Self-discipline. That
is just necessary. It is not enough we think we can manage the classroom. It is
necessary for the students to have and develop self-discipline.

Yes, because only
in that way they’ll set to work and learn. And self-discipline can be taught to
those students. How? Well, explaining to them the advantages and necessity of
working and trying to learn, this is, making them think!

And we’ll implement this with the advertising
psychology: repeating the same message both with similar words and in different
modes also, and often with a challenging smile.

Self-discipline is paramount:
it’s the students the ones who have to wish to learn. When we achieve our
students would wish to learn, the road is open to us. Alike we’ll reinforce our
students’ discipline by telling them what they’re doing fine and making them
recognize and rationalize what’s wrong about their behavior and attitude.

Self-discipline:
it is necessary to make our students grow and increase that classroom discipline.
And a quick trick to set them working is by implementing a dictation. And from
that setting we’ll be able to make them think what is adequate and fine to do.

If
we’re teachers enamored of our profession, our knowledge area, and treating our
students with affection and care, we will for sure transmit and pass on our
likes for that knowledge area to our dear students, sooner or later. / Photo
from: Paisajes_Wallpapers-1080p_02. The picture is just an illustration.

Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Interiorizing reading
so as for it to stay inside somehow, in our interior side I mean.

I wrote that
sentence yesterday. And it serves the purpose for many things. I mean, reading
carefully is a nice learning strategy but also it is good for many other
things. Interiorizing what is being read is useful for example to our students.
Also to externalize the genius they carry in their inside! For them to write
essays, to write stories, to write books, it is necessary and sort of customary
to read massively. It’d be silly to spoil possible geniuses we might have among
our students, wouldn’t it be?

Teachers as well have to read, if they want to
improve as teachers and as persons, maybe as dads and as moms. And the summer
break can be nice and adequate for reading.

Now I focus on the teachers’ case.
We should read about education and about teaching, though there may be a long
sequence of years since we started our career as teachers. Formation and
training does not finish ever! But select what you read, anyway.

On the other
side, many of you teachers can write about your classroom experiences. They are
valuable. Share those experiences with us your colleagues.

When reading on
education and teaching try to study what you’re reading. So read as if the
sentences and ideas would be getting stuck inside. Try and make mental
conclusions and summaries of the main ideas, as you’re reading. If you study
you’ll gain moral authority and nice experience for advising your dear students!

You will be transmitting nice and useful ideas to your students, as if you were
transmitting through osmosis or by contagion. Nothing is lost! Whatever we
teachers do with love is never lost. It remains inside our students. Last but
not least: let’s select what we read: it must be adequate for human beings that
want to live as thorough, honorable and upright persons. / Photo from: bagpiper
pinterest com. The picture is a nice illustration.

Monday, July 3, 2017

I know an
English-language teacher that got C2 level of that language, which as you may
know is the top level of a language. And with stays that were few and short in
English-speaking countries. What was his secret?

His attitude. Yes, just his
attitude. He was eager to learn and acquire the language. He learned his
English in Spain, while speaking in that tongue with American people – above
all, also with British people but less.

He practiced the four skills of the
language: listening, speaking, reading and writing, in that order of
importance. He listened to radio stations on the Internet, spoke with native
people, read a lot in books and had a blog where he posted in English. And he
was a new-word hunter: every or close to every word he saw he made a nice
effort to learn it and through that he learned a vast lexis.

Regularly he still
reads, every single day and writes his daily post on the Web. Some people say
sometimes you can’t see the foreign learner when reading what he writes, well
more or less it’s so.

As I told you he’s an English-language teacher and he
assures that with teaching English you at the same time learn English, you
teach English, you learn English. People from schools and summer camps count on
him as a teacher and assessor about teaching/learning that tongue, that
marvelous tongue. Well, anyway, he's a regular and ordinary guy! / Photo from: wallpapers-paisajes-isla-hd-1045. That teacher
assists in summer camps.